


Wear a Moonlit Face

by gloss



Category: DC Comics, The Flash - All Media Types
Genre: Anal Sex, Bronze Age, Cunnilingus, Disco, Double Penetration, Identity Porn, Multi, Superpowers As Sex Toys, Swingers, m/f/m
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-23
Updated: 2010-09-23
Packaged: 2017-10-12 03:39:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/120349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The 1970s swinger story that canon demanded! Iris is liberated, Barry is helpful, and playboy Bruce Wayne is kind of an ass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wear a Moonlit Face

**Author's Note:**

> Set during [**The Brave and the Bold** #151](http://www.comicbookdb.com/issue.php?ID=66816) (1979), spinning off from [these](http://www.exitseraphim.net/glossings/images/comics/BatB151-p2.jpg) [two](http://www.exitseraphim.net/glossings/images/comics/BatB151-p3.jpg) pages. I have proceeded with the assumption that Iris knows Bruce's secret identity, though canon is conflicted on that point.
> 
> Title from ["Late Night Dawning"](http://www.gorillavsbear.net/2010/01/26/late-night-dawning/) by [Sunset](http://sunset.bandcamp.com/album/loveshines-but-the-moon-is-shining-too). Thanks to G. for making this work.

"Are you even listening?" Iris asked Barry.

Their plane was circling Gotham International, waiting to land, and he was as moony and distracted as ever.

Impatience with Barry was, Iris often thought, her default mode of being. He was late, or he was leaving; he was never there, he was always the Flash.

She had never once doubted his love.

She just was never entirely sure who, exactly, he did love. She played too many roles for him; she was his wife, the damsel in distress, the object of Zoom's obsession, the representative of humanity and reason Barry wanted to help.

She was rarely, if ever, just herself.

Iris knew all about investing too much in someone, making him a symbol and reservoir for everything she did not have and could not be. She had played the Flash -- heroic, thoughtful, and kind -- against poor Barry Allen, the shy, fearful man, for years. She had hoped to inspire Barry, to push him past whatever held him back, to make him see what he could might be capable of doing.

Instead, she had succeeded in proving herself to be the worst kind of fool, gullible and superficial, the sort of shrill, useless woman to whom men needed to lie.

No, worse: She was revealed to be a woman to whom men _did_ lie, copiously, for years.

"Just promise me," she told him as they landed. "Just be _Barry_ this weekend. Can you do that?"

He did not look happy, but he nodded. "Okay."

"Promise," she repeated.

-

Iris needed more, deserved better. Barry was struggling with the idea that he had failed her. So far, it was still just an idea; he was a scientist, however, and hypotheses were made to be tested.

There was not nearly enough light here in the discotheque. What there was cut across unexpected angles, snagged on the edge of small mirrors, then streamed away. His face hurt from squinting both to see and against the haze of smoke and fog from the ice machine.

Everyone seemed to be having a whale of a time. He had not been able to find the coat check, so he juggled Bruce's raincoat with his own and Iris's short jacket on one arm while clutching a glass of soda water in the other hand.

Condensation pooled between his knuckles.

Iris was, by far, the loveliest woman here. She twirled under Bruce's hand like the dancer in a jewelry box, her face upturned, her hips swinging.

The other women here resembled Bruce's date, Rhonda. Extravagantly made-up, dressed in skimpy swathes of shiny fabric, they seemed tipsy and bony compared to Iris's forthright beauty. They teetered on platform sandals, tossed their skinny arms to and fro, and all he could do was worry that someone was going to twist an ankle or somehow get hurt.

" _Finally!_ " Iris claimed the glass of water from his hand and drank it down to the ice cubes. Even in the dark, he could see that her cheeks were very pink. When she leaned against him to adjust the strap on her shoe, he breathed in the warm scent of her sweat mixed with Evening in Paris and cigarettes.

"What are you doing over here in the corner?" Iris asked as she straightened up, smoothing her skirt down her hips.

He already missed the light pressure of her body against his own.

Her question might have been innocent, a simply inquiry. It might have been a rebuke, chiding him for being _here_ , not _there_. (Wherever  there was.)

He had to be careful these days. He could no longer assume he understood anything she said.

He never should have assumed in the first place.

Possibly this uncertainty was how she had always felt around him. He devoutly hoped not.

Iris blinked and glanced away. Before her attention waned completely, Barry finally replied, "I was thinking that you're the prettiest lady here."

Her smile was vintage Iris -- at the start, it was knowing, a little ironic and slightly suspicious, and then it widened into something simpler and true, dazzling.

She pecked him on the cheek, hugged him around the neck quickly, then handed him back the empty cup and sashayed back onto the dance floor.

Face hot, Barry crunched the ice cubes and wished he'd asked her to dance.

-

Iris gripped the edge of the sink. She touched up her lipstick - it was too pale to be chic here in Gotham, but it was all she had - and patted down her hair.

"May I?" she asked the girl at the next sink just as she capped a tube of vampire-dark lipstick.

The girl petted her feathered hair, then wiped her nose and sniffed wetly. "You a narc?"

Iris turned away. She was thick-ankled and matronly compared to the swans flitting in and out of the washroom, twirling on the dance floor, sulking prettily at the bar.

"Ahaha," Bruce crowed when she stepped back into the club. He slid an arm around her waist and pulled her close. "I was beginning to think you'd moved in."

Bruce played the fool very, very well. Hollow laugh, twinkling eyes, roving hands.

Normally, Iris knew, she would have been irritated, if not outright annoyed, by such ridiculous behavior.

But she was here, under a mirror ball, well past midnight in Gotham City, and everyone else was having fun. Why not Bruce? Why not her?

Heroes like Barry (and, yes, Bruce) played role after role. Their lives depended on it.

Perhaps her life did not _depend_ on having fun tonight, but she was determined to act as if it did.

"Shall we?" Bruce smiled at her, and for a moment, she felt as if the entire city were looking at her, holding its breath, leaning in.

Iris shook out her hair and took his hand. "We shall."

Bruce held her hips as the next song started; she turned around, shimmied, and lost herself in the music.

Later, as they rested in an overstuffed banquette, Bruce held court. He introduced her to a stream of people; the way he described her work, she came off as a strange hybrid of Margaret Bourke-White and Diane Arbus.

Bruce wrinkled his nose when she said that. "Arbus? Photographs the freaks and gimps and suchlike?"

Iris took a sip of water. "She's really quite interesting. Her work is compelling --"

"Don't waste your time on uglies," Bruce told her. He sounded paternal and secretive, as if speaking from experience. His arm slid around her shoulders, palm cupping her bare arm. "Trust me, life's too short to waste on grim and gloomy sad things."

Iris had no idea what to say to that. Surely he was joking.

But he just tipped his head and blinked at her before adding, "Don't you agree? A woman of the world like yourself..."

She had interviewed politicians at all levels; Bruce put congressmen, governors, and all the rest to shame with his flattery and studied attention.

Iris patted his hand. "Let's dance some more."

She needed more time to learn the rules of this game.

Iris liked to believe that she could appreciate pretense. After all, she was married to a man who wore red pajamas in order to fight crime at supersonic speeds. Appreciation for the manifest variety of life and its required roles was hardly optional.

Bruce Wayne's mastery of pretense was nothing short of sublime. The gloomy, Gothic vigilante about whom Barry liked to wonder and marvel was nowhere in evidence.

And he danced like a professional.

As much as she enjoyed being the object of Bruce's attention -- and he had a way of focusing solely on you that was unequaled -- her pleasure depended to some extent on knowing that Barry was watching.

Over there, blond hair shining in the splatter of light off a mirror-ball, Barry was standing Boy Scout straight and _watching_ them like it was Christmas at Radio City Music Hall.

He was smiling vaguely, looking entirely out of place and not caring one bit. His presence sent goosebumps across her skin where Bruce touched it, made her shiver when Bruce bent to whisper in her ear.

She might have been Bruce's focus (or, more accurately, Bruce might have succeeded in pretending she were his focus), but together, the two of them composed yet another focus, one that more exclusive, all for Barry.

-

Iris and Bruce returned to the table, where Barry nursed another club soda. Bruce took his seat heavily, almost territorially, signaling for drinks and waving at friends across the club simultaneously.

Just by being there, he claimed the entire space.

"What's the ring for?" Bruce caught Barry's hand. "School thing? Not a wedding band, is it?"

Barry threw Iris a panicked look; she reached over and pried open Bruce's grip so Barry could take back his hand.

He started to say, "You know what it is --" but Iris shook her head, once, decisively, _no_.

"Barry's married to his job," she said lightly.

Bruce laughed long and loud, hard enough to wipe tears from his eyes and slap his knee. Finally, catching his breath, shaking his head, all he could say was, "You poor bastard."

Bruce was in his element. _One_ of his elements, Barry supposed. Bruce had so many.

But this was certainly one of them. On the way out of the club, Bruce somehow acquired three pretty blondes. They were twined around him as Barry and Iris perched on the town car's jump seat. The girls were skinny little things with sharp laughs, nearly high enough for dogs to hear. They twitched and bounced so much that Barry felt comfortable concluding they had taken cocaine.

Not Bruce, however. He just sat back against the seat, legs splayed, one arm up, his shirt-collar open to his pectorals, and _smiled_. At nothing and no one, though the warmth he exuded encompassed them all.

Out of the cowl, away from responsibilities, Bruce was a strikingly handsome man. He didn't look fully _real_ , however, less a fellow human being and more an ad in the pages of Esquire, groomed beautifully, achingly handsome, muscled beyond most men's ambitions.

The girls wanted to go to another club.

"Alcibiades's Table?" Iris repeated and leaned forward to touch the nearest girl's knobby knee. Her excitement took Barry by surprise. "You can get in there?"

"Totally! Brucie's a charter flight!" She nodded so furiously that her enormous earrings nearly whipped her nose.

"Ahaha," Bruce laughed and hugged her close. "That's charter _member_ , honey-bun. And it's a _secret_ , remember?"

She pouted and wiped her nose. "I forgot."

Bruce pinched her arm and kissed the crown of her head. "Nothing in here but sweet, clean air, huh?"

"But Alcibiades --" Iris pressed.

"Is that an establishment you'd be..." Bruce licked the corner of his mouth and glanced at Barry. "You'd both be interested in?"

Barry did not know what they were talking about; everyone else seemed to be well-acquainted with the place. The tallest of the blonde girls tilted her head and looked him up and down. "They'd have him for _brunch_ ," she said, and they all laughed.

But when the car drew up to the nondescript townhouse on a quiet, dark side-street, Bruce shooed the girls out, slapping each one on the rump as she clambered to the sidewalk, then swung the door shut.

"I think I'm in the mood for something a little more _intimate_ ," he said. "What do you say?"

"Agreed," Iris said.

"Good," Bruce said, and patted the seat beside him. His hand moved in hypnotic circles against the leather. "Now that kiddie time's over, why don't you make yourself comfortable, Ms. West?"

"What's Alcibiades?" Barry asked instead of replying.

Iris was already moving to join Bruce on the seat. "A swingers' club," she said. "You said you read my piece on them, last summer, in PM."

"I did read it," he protested. "I just didn't make the connection."

So they were swingers tonight: the evening began to assume a rough sort of logic. Iris's flirtation, Bruce's extravagance, his own odd voyeurism.

"I thought it was superb," Bruce said and Iris ducked her head, steadying herself thanks to his hands. Bruce helped her over, then added, "Will you be joining us, Mr. Allen?"

Iris glanced at Barry.

"Yes," Barry said. "I'm coming."

The car took a sharp turn, and Barry pitched forward into Iris. She landed half in Bruce's lap, while Barry hit his head on the window.

Bruce circled his arm around her waist. "Rough streets here in Gotham. Real rough."

It was such a ridiculous comment, given the luxury of their surroundings, that Barry had to laugh.

Bruce cocked his head and blinked innocently, while Iris shushed him. "You should know, right, Bruce?"

Bruce nodded, and bit his lower lip, looking over at Iris through lowered lashes. "Yes."

Barry realized that he was acting like a jackass of the highest order. He reached over, intending to clap Bruce on the shoulder, but Alfred hit the brakes suddenly, and Barry grabbed Bruce's knee instead.

Bruce looked at his hand, then over at Barry, the surprise on his face giving way to a smirk.

"Sorry," Barry mumbled, and tried to retrieve his hand.

This would be so much easier at speed, but he had promised Iris: no powers, no Flash, only Barry, such as he was, this weekend.

Bruce grasped his hand and held it there. Barry looked from him to Iris, then back to his own lap.

Iris laughed and playfully slapped Bruce's hand. "Leave him be, Bruce. He's just an innocent Midwesterner, after all."

Barry opened his mouth to protest; of all people, Iris knew that was not the whole truth.

Bruce's own laughter boomed and he released his hold on Barry only to grab him around the neck and drag him up against his chest. He ruffled Barry's hair, then kissed the crown of his head.

"I miss the crew cut, Bare," he said, and, finally, let Barry go. His upper-crust drawl was thick as maple syrup. "You look as degenerate as the rest of us now."

Barry's lungs ached, as if he had been holding his breath for too long. He _had_. "Need to get with the times," he said and heard too late just how limp and pointless his words were.

Iris smiled at him, her attention brief and glancing as a skipped pebble. "He's very handsome, whatever his hair is doing."

He felt like a child beside them. If not a child, someone unformed and pedestrian. Bruce was -- well, he was _Bruce_ , rich and powerful and a force of will; Iris was a sophisticate, restless and as cultured as any woman in Gotham or Paris.

Barry was just a doctor's kid from Central City. That fact had never bothered him before. Like all facts, it simply was.

It was not, of course, the whole truth. Nothing ever was.

The Flash had been to outer space and the center of the Earth, to Gorilla City and Tierra del Fuego.

Tonight, however, he was to be the Midwestern naif.

He supposed he could do that. For Iris, if nothing else.

*

"Hell of a woman," Bruce said as he stood aside to let first Iris, then Barry, step off the elevator first. Silhouetted against the dark, Iris hurried down the hall while the men hung back.

"Yes," Barry said, watching her go. Her filmy dress clung to her curves, the skirt lifting and floating behind her. "She's --"

He did not finish. Bruce stood very close to him, radiating warmth. Barry's skin felt just slightly too tight.

Iris's heels clicked on marble; her arms lifted like wings as she reached back to arrange her hair.

They watched her, until she disappeared around an ornate pillar at the far end of the penthouse, one that divided the public areas from the private, and then they were watching each other. Lights and clouds, zeppelins and jetliners, traced illegible scrawls across Bruce's face.

"Well?" From behind the pillar, Iris leaned back into view, visible again from the waist up. "Gentlemen? Shall we?"

All around them, Gotham winked and seemed to tremble.

Bruce's arm settled heavily on Barry's shoulder, his big hand grasping the nape of his neck. For a moment, Barry was Robin, or Wally, any hopeful child; then Bruce's thumb pushed under Barry's collar and pinched.

"Let's," Barry said, loud enough to carry; Bruce shook him like a puppy while Iris clapped.

Bruce's master suite was bigger than their first apartment. Iris sat on the edge of the bed, leaning back, palms brushing the velvet coverlet. Shedding his jacket as he went, Bruce joined her.

Barry hung back, watching them. They were easy with each other, affectionate and playful, flirtatious to a degree he, himself, had never been able to achieve. He suspected he should not get such a thrill watching his wife with someone else, but all night long, he had been able to really _see_ Iris, as if for the first time, enjoy her pleasure, admire her beauty, wit, and poise.

Seeing them incline together, heads touching at the temples, Bruce holding her palm and pretending to read it, left Barry both warm and chilled. Hot inside, tense, but damp and chill on the surface.

"You will experience great pleasure," Bruce told her in an outrageous accent. "But, first, you must invite the golden-haired stranger to partake..."

Iris cocked her head and said, "Coming, darling?"

"Yes, I --" Barry shrugged off his jacket and lay it carefully across the back of a chair. "Sorry."

He settled gingerly next to her on the bed.

"Late as always," Iris said, but to Bruce, and shook her head as if to add, see what I put up with?

-

"I just don't know what you _want_ ," Barry had said several times over the years. Face flushed, beautiful but so obtuse, he turned blue eyes on her and begged her to tell him what to do.

She didn't know. She knew she didn't want to have to say anything so explicitly; she was able (and expected) to anticipate his needs. Why couldn't it work in reverse?

"I don't know," she would invariably tell him, and turn away, and give up.

"Just tell me?"

"Never mind."

The fault must have been with her.

Iris had promised to do anything for, give anything to, Barry.

That was what a wife did. It didn't matter whether her husband was a superhero or a bus driver, the Flash or any ordinary Joe. It should not matter.

It did matter.

Anything had become, more often than not, everything.

She would have gone around the bend, married to a bank teller or account executive, she knew that much.

"This," she whispered now, open mouth against Barry's, one hand on his chest. "Give me this."

-

"Anything," he told her, and then again.

She groaned into his mouth, the noise more a sob than anything else, as if his reply were both necessary and agonizing for her.

When Iris turned, breaking their kiss, Barry kept his eyes closed. He needed that illusion of privacy, just for a moment.

When he opened them, he expected to see her kissing Bruce. He intended to kiss the nape of her neck and bury his face in her hair.

Instead, Bruce's handsome face filled Barry's vision: intense blue eyes crinkling at the corners, aquiline nose, smooth cheeks just this side of plump and wide, mobile mouth.

Bruce's gaze was nearly hypnotic.

Iris pressed against his side and nipped his ear. Her chuckle radiated into his skin.

"How 'bout it, Barrence?" Bruce continued to use his WASPy lockjaw voice. His smile tilted as he looked down, then over. His lashes were very full, his lips quite -- _flexible_. "You up for some good times?"

Barry breathed out.

One of Bruce's dimples winked in and out.

When Barry brushed his fingertips across the bare, smooth skin at Bruce's open collar, Bruce started to chuckle, then bit his lip.

He really was playing every coquettish trick in the book.

Barry's hand slid to Bruce's neck. His thumb played over Adam's apple, then the hollow of Bruce's throat, the skin warm and taut. Bruce's chuckle dissolved into a sigh. When he brushed the pad of his thumb over Bruce's chin, then his moist lower lip, Bruce opened his mouth.

"Figured you'd need _a lot_ more convincing," Bruce said. He sounded breathless.

That, too, might have been an act.

Barry pushed his fingers into Bruce's thick, silky hair and pulled him in.

"I catch on fast," Barry said against Bruce's mouth. Iris's grip tightened on his waist, her breath hectic against his neck.

It had been a very long time since Barry had kissed anyone but Iris, much longer since he had kissed another man. Of course, Bruce was nothing like Barry's fellow scrawny undergraduates, struck dumb by shame and need in equal proportions. He was loud -- even in the midst of a kiss -- and powerful, imposing and very, very strong. His big hand on Barry's shoulder pushed him back, then forward, and his tongue thrust and twisted around Barry's like he was determined to taste each micron of Barry's mouth. And chin, and cheek: Bruce slid open-mouthed around to Barry's ear, to kiss Iris, then Barry again.

Barry tasted a fleeting echo of lipstick, and then it was all Bruce again, slick and musky.

Bruce kissed the _hell_ out of him, as Hal might say, but Barry did his level best to give as good as he got.

-

Iris drew a little back, making room for the men to kiss. The nasty, uncharitable part of her thought, so here's something else he can have without me. She hated the idea, and herself for being so petty, so selfish.

Then Barry reached for her, drew her in, and bent her back against Bruce to kiss her face, her neck, the stretch of her collarbone. Iris arched to his touch, heard Bruce whisper filthy suggestions, and forgot all about anything else.

Bruce gathered her up onto his lap, hand running up her legs, nudging them apart. "You like this? Being right in the middle of things?"

She nodded, biting her lower lip, as Barry kissed the tops of her breasts and Bruce teased the inside of her thighs.

"Hmm?" Bruce asked. His whisper sounded like a cyclone so close to her ear. He pinched the top of her garter. "What was that?"

"Yes," Iris said, and Barry looked up, startled. She patted his shoulder and swallowed. "Yes, I like this."

Barry grinned. Bruce rubbed tiny, light circles even higher on her leg.

"What do you want?" he asked. "Hmm?"

Iris drew a deep breath and fought to think clearly. "I want you to _shut up_ ," she said, "and make yourself useful. For a start."

Bruce's laughter rocked her against Barry. "Well, _all right_." He rearranged himself at the edge of the bed, legs spread wide. "Why doesn't madam stand in front of me, then?"

She eyed him, but there was nothing in his face but arousal -- red skin, sheen of sweat -- and teasing. "Fine."

"Bare, you'll probably want to get behind her, give her a hand." Bruce scooted even close to the edge of the bed and tugged Iris right up against him. "If I'm _half_ as good at this as I've been told, she's going to have some trouble keeping her balance --"

His hand dove under her skirts, right to the crotch of her nylons, and he gripped her mound, tipping her hips up. When he spoke, his breath was hot, raspy, through the fabric.

"-- hell, she'll probably have trouble remembering her name."

Barry held her around her waist as Iris thrust against Bruce's hand. He ripped open her nylons and corkscrewed two fingers against her labia.

"Juicy," Bruce said, and Barry moaned now, with her, his hand tightening on one of her breasts. "Just how long have you been ready, honey?"

Longer than he knew.

"You're disgusting," she tried to say, but it came out in another moan as Barry mouthed her neck and Bruce dropped open his mouth and curled his tongue unerringly around her clit's sheath.

She bucked, Bruce chuckled, and the vibration of that sound made her dizzy. She had to drop her stance and lock her knees as Bruce's tongue shifted and he pressed his entire mouth against her. Suction and friction drove her to the tips of her toes, then almost flopping back against Barry.

Bruce did more than lick; he pressed up into her, offering undifferentiated, overwhelming sensation that made her jump and drop, grind and tremble. She wanted more, twisting in Barry arms, babbling a little.

Barry tried to soothe her; Bruce, on the other hand, redoubled his efforts until her buttocks were clenched and the muscles in her thighs fluttered like hummingbirds, antic and uncontrollable.

All she wanted to do was grab his hair with both hands and rub herself off. She pictured it, even felt the tug on his scalp, craved the slick abrasion against his face, but before she moved, he changed the rhythm entirely.

His tongue stroked, sure as a finger, between her lips, up her clit, before his lips closed around the head as if they'd been engineered precisely for her, for just this.

The pleasure deepened and broadened for a long, breathless moment. Iris shifted her weight back (Barry grunted) and started to thrust into Bruce's mouth. She closed one fist in his hair and fucked his mouth with a rough, regular beat.

Bruce's eyes flickered up to hers. They shone, blue as bruises, wet with tears, and then they narrowed as he smiled against her. He rocked his chin into her, rubbed and sucked, before he tugged back, pulling her inner labia with him.

She thrust again, wished (fleetingly) she had a dick to drive down his throat, then used her hand to shove his face back where she needed it.

He hummed around her clit, as if satisfied.

Plucked, set in motion, Iris rocked on her toes back and forth. She had long ago lost track of how much time was passing; her thighs were sticky with Bruce's spit and her own cream. His stubble abraded her skin; her pubic hair caught in his teeth; she didn't want, ever, to come to an end.

And at the same time, she wanted to come so badly she could feel it like the weight of grief on her chest -- pressure of tears behind her eyes, stones clogging her throat, hands curled into fists.

Her free hand flailed for balance. She tried to reach Barry, then Bruce, but found, instead, that Barry's hand was on Bruce's cheek. And Bruce had turned to suck Barry's thumb and forefinger.

Barry pulled his hand back and kissed her shoulder.

"May I? I'd like to --" As ever when he suggested something in bed, particularly involving his powers, he sounded abashed and prepared for rejection.

Bruce pulled back fractionally, brows knitting in confusion.

Iris held him in place and twisted at the waist to kiss Barry's dear, sweet mouth. "If you _don't_ ," she said, "I'll have your balls."

To Bruce, she added, as she rolled her hips forward, "C'mon, playboy. Where were we?"

He shrugged and moved back in, tongue lapping the grooves between inner and outer labia. She flashed between overstimulated, nearly numb, and yearning heat, an imperative for yet more.

Her dress was yanked down and racked up, little more than a snarl around her waist. Barry's hand parted her buttocks, cupping her from behind. His thumb slid right to her vaginal hole while his first two fingers rubbed her asshole in circles.

When she grunted, low in her throat, he sped up the motion, hand starting to vibrate against her, fingers and thumb inside her. He panted against her ear, told her over and over how he loved her, while Iris seesawed between his hand and Bruce's mouth.

Pausing for breath, Bruce arched an eyebrow. "Well," he said, touching Barry's vibrating knuckles with one finger. "I imagine _that'd_ be handy."

She rode them both, for longer than she thought possible, yowling and moaning until her throat was strep-raw. Every worry and fear emptied out of her, as if a trapdoor had opened, until all that was left was the heat steaming off her and the orgasms snapping through her, threatening and promising more than she could bear.

Barry fucked her, back and front, and sucked her neck. The buzz of his touch inside and out, the rasp of Bruce's genius tongue, drove her up en pointe, twisted her in desperation.

"Pants off," she told him in the pause between shouts. She sounded asthmatic, elderly, cruel, but she could not soften. "Take it out."

His cock slid between her legs; she closed them and bore down, lest he take away his hand. Bruce sucked her, then dipped down to Barry's cockhead, then her again, while she let the vibrations shake her to bits.

Barry bucked against her, calling out Bruce's name, and she laughed with Bruce at his enthusiasm, at the shock in his voice.

"More," she told them, both of them. She pulled off of Barry's hand wrenchingly. Her center went hollow, aching, for a moment, before she kicked Bruce back onto the bed and scrambled up his lean, strong torso to straddle his face. The change in angle shifted the pleasure, broadened it. Over her shoulder, before she collapsed down onto her elbows, she said, simply, "Barry --"

And he was there. Hands on her buttocks, fingers working her open again, he was right there, breath pooling between her shoulder blades before he entered her ass in a long, shuddering thrust. He may have been speeding. She was far too gone to be able to tell.

She pushed back, raising her rump and swishing back and forth over Bruce's mouth. She was full, over-full and so tense, perfectly so. She pushed her face into the mattress and sucked the fabric into her mouth, sought a gag as fervently as release.

When it came, when she shook beyond control and lost track of not just her limbs but her spine and skull, Barry gathered her up, wrapped both arms around her and held her tightly. His hips jackrabbited a few more times before he came, too.

She heard his balls slapping skin, heard Bruce let out a long, laughing sigh, heard the expensive sheets slip and slide beneath them as Bruce extricated himself from their tangle.

Barry eased her down to the bed, then brushed the sweaty hair off her cheek. As if she were an invalid, handle with care, don't startle or scare.

Later, as the afterglow dimmed slightly, from blinding to merely distracting, Iris struggled to sit up. She shook her head to clear it, then stood.

"I need a bath," she told them. Bruce leaned against the headboard, one arm folded behind his head. His other hand toyed with his pubic hair and the base of his shaft while he wore a lazy smirk on his face. Barry sat rather primly to Bruce's left, the sheet draped around him like a toga.

Bruce waved his hand toward the door. "Right through there, hot stuff."

"But what about him?" Barry patted the space beside Bruce and lifted his chin to indicate Bruce's fairly impressive semi-erection. "He hasn't..."

He was relentlessly fair, literally so, to the very last: share and share alike, equal portions, or else.

"Can't you suck him off or something?" Iris shook the hair out of her eyes. "Don't you want to?"

Barry's eyes widened as he ducked his head and hunched his shoulders. He may have been blushing.

"Yeah, Barry," Bruce drawled, running his fingertips up Barry's spine; she knew all too well the teasing lightness of that touch, and she shivered sympathetically. "Can't you? Pretty please?"

"You two work it out," she said on her way to the washroom. A bath, hot and long, was exactly what she craved: to get the sticky sex off her, clean herself inside and out, relax back into her own mind.

"...do that magic vibrating thing?" Bruce was asking as she turned on the taps. "That'd be _groovy_."

-

Barry woke alone. He had the huge bed to himself; while the skylight showed darkness still, he could not tell how much time had passed.

"You have no idea what it's like, waking up alone --" Iris had said, several times over the years, when they fought about the Flash. Angry tears would prickle her lashes, the tip of her nose would glow scarlet. "Three, four times a night, you're gone and I don't know where you are or if you're ever coming back."

She was right. Waking to solitary uncertainty was both cold and alienating. He tried to shake off the creeping feeling as he stood and looked around, but it clung to his skin and the base of his brain.

Their clothes were no longer scattered helter-skelter around the room. He devoutly hoped that Alfred had not crept in here while they slept in order to tidy up.

The others had left traces behind -- the mirror in the bathroom was half-fogged, a single long hair of Iris's curved extravagantly along the sink basin, a shaving brush was still wet to the touch.

He found his trousers draped over the back of a chair on the other side of the suite and pulled them on, wincing a little at the scrape of fabric on still-sensitive skin and, especially, genitals.

Determined not to think about what they had done earlier, Barry found himself wondering instead what Bruce and Iris must be doing together _now_. Desire, shot through with sadness, twisted in his chest. He could not run, either, which he usually did to get through periods of high emotion. He had given his word.

Timidly, he ventured out of the suite. The penthouse was wreathed in shadows; only the most general outlines of furnishings could be made out in the gloom.

He found Iris on the balcony. She was barefoot, dressed in the slacks she had traveled in yesterday. An enormous burgundy smoking jacket that must have belonged to Bruce was wrapped nearly double around her. As she smoked, she kept pushing the long sleeves up to her elbows. Her hands were tiny and white, like birds, against the dark hedge and darker fabric.

She did not stir much as he approached; she seemed to expect him. She didn't _welcome_ him, either; she merely exhaled smoke away from him and switched her cigarette to her far hand.

"Morning," Barry ventured.

"Not quite yet," she said, moving her hand to take in all of Gotham below them and the trembling line of light, the color of mourning doves, at the horizon.

"Where's..." Barry began and did not finish.

Cigarette in her mouth, Iris held up her index fingers on either side of her head. Batman, the gesture said.

"You're kidding. He went out? _Tonight_?"

She shrugged. "It seems to be a habit none of you are willing to break."

Barry let that pass.

Perhaps, more accurately, he simply had nothing to say in response.

Iris flicked her cigarette butt off the balcony and turned, tucking her hip against the hedge-railing. "You know, given the way he was acting last night, I was beginning to doubt he knew that I knew."

Barry nodded. "He likes to --"

"And then out he came in cowl and cape, no big deal," she continued.

Barry stroked the back of his hand across hers, then held it. "He likes to practice, I think. Different roles, Method acting, that sort of thing."

Iris rolled her eyes.

Set against the jumble of the Gotham skyline, Iris was nearly aglow. Her eyes were dark and intent, her lips full; he preferred her just like this, scrubbed clean and unpainted. Her damp hair lifted in the breeze.

Barry moved closer, still holding her hand, in order to face her. "And you and he? Did you...?"

Tilting her head, retrieving her hand, Iris leveled her gaze on him. The weak dawn light washed over her, made her look suddenly remote and grand, a lost Gish sister.

"Do you really want to know?" she asked him.

Something antic and staticky cascaded through Barry. It left him breathless. He pressed his lips together and tried to look away. "No," he admitted. "I guess I don't."

He would not know. This single patch of ignorance exposed all the others, like a light switched on behind threadbare fabric. What he felt as love was fragility itself, woven with sighs and half-formed hopes.

He had never known her, not fully, and he never would.

All she had ever asked was to know _him_. To have him, here, not late, not leaving early.

He ran a hand through his hair. When Iris shivered, he flipped up the collar of the smoking jacket, then, hesitantly, slipped his arm around her. She let him gather her against his side, hold her close.

"I love you," he told the horizon. The words were the same as a million times before, but they meant something else entirely. The feelings might have had the same name -- love \-- but they were night and day, utterly different. It had changed, maybe been reduced, but it beat on, strong as an elk's heart, dark and powerful.

Iris looked down, then back up at him, and rested her cheek on his chest. Her hair blew across his mouth. Barry traced her lower lip with his thumb, pressed into the echo of a smile.

Then, leaning back a little, though not breaking away, she smiled for real. The expression was a small, guarded one, but it was undeniable.

"You, too," she said.

Her arms went around his neck, her kiss tasted like someone else's toothpaste, and Barry could not let go.

 

[end]


End file.
